The military enlistment office in Nizhnevartovsk was set on fire to earn money

The Central District Military Court issued the first verdict in which the arson of the military registration and enlistment office building was qualified as a terrorist attack. We are talking about the events in Nizhnevartovsk (Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug). Vladislav Borisenko received 12 years in prison.

The attack on the military enlistment office on Mira Street in Nizhnevartovsk took place on the night of May 4, 2022. According to investigators, the attackers threw at least seven Molotov cocktails, not all of which caught fire. The fire spread to the hall, the fire area was about 1 sq. m. The fire was extinguished by the police who came to the call. One of the attackers filmed what was happening on video.

Investigators opened a criminal case on intentional destruction or damage to property (Part 2 of Article 167 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and hooliganism (Article 213 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and soon detained Vladislav Borisenko and Vasily Gavrilishen, accused of the attack. In November, their cases were submitted for consideration to the Central District Military Court in Yekaterinburg, which reclassified them to paragraph “a” of Part 2 of Art. 205 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (a terrorist act committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy).

As it became known in court, Vasily Gavrilishen admitted to the investigation that the attack was committed solely for the purpose of making money. TASS reported that a certain Rostislav Mukhin contacted the defendant in Telegram, who offered “for work” from 1 million to 3 million rubles. As an advance payment, he sent $1,000 to Gavrilishen for a crypto wallet.

He made “Molotov cocktails”, and also offered Vladislav Borisenko to help in fulfilling the order. The role of the second was to film the attack in order to subsequently provide the video to the “customer” and confirm the work.

On the way to the military registration and enlistment office, the men disabled CCTV cameras so that the security forces could not identify them, but the video of the attack got on the Internet for an unknown reason.

Vladislav Borisenko and Vasily Gavrilishen pleaded guilty to the attack, but expressed disagreement with the reclassification of the case as a terrorist act.

Today, January 31, judge Sergei Kramskoy sentenced Vladislav Borisenko to 12 years in prison, of which he will spend three years in prison, and the rest of the term in a strict regime colony. This is the first case in the country of a sentence under the article on a terrorist attack for setting fire to a military registration and enlistment office. The prosecutor’s office requested 13 years in prison for him. Lawyer Sergei Chernyshkov told Kommersant-Ural that he would not comment on the court’s verdict until the motivational part was received.

The case of Vasily Gavrilishen is being considered separately by a panel of three federal judges, and his verdict will be delivered later.

The head of the Agora international human rights group, Pavel Chikov, believes that qualifying the arson of the military registration and enlistment office under the article on terrorism is a political decision.

“Including to be able to hold accountable for justifying terrorism those who approve of such actions. Plus, such a qualification means the jurisdiction of the FSB, ”said the lawyer in an interview with Kommersant-Ural.

Stanislav Seleznev, senior partner of the Network Freedoms project, noted that earlier, according to information from open sources, sentences for setting fire to military registration and enlistment offices were mainly issued under Art. 167 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, and a terrorist attack, according to the law, is committed in order to influence the decision-making by authorities or international organizations. He added that defendants who are charged with a terrorist attack often “fall into a trap” when they plead guilty in court to committing an act, that is, involvement in the fact itself, but express disagreement with the incriminated article. In such cases, the court hears only that the person has admitted guilt, which means that he has recognized the entire disposition of the article that he is charged with. It is also important, according to Mr. Seleznev, what the consequences of the arson were: whether people were injured, important documents, and so on. And did the attacker know that they were there at the time of the arson. “Only an action or a threat of action that threatened the death of people, significant damage or other grave consequences can be recognized as a terrorist attack,” the expert emphasized.